"The studio situation in this photo is overloaded in a number of respects. On a few days throughout the year I'll put together a kind of Schaulager, a combination of storage and display where different elements are stacked up against one another—large versus small, old versus new, etc. This stops the working process from becoming like an exhibition situation that will later be presented in, say, a gallery. Everything is assembled in a kind of deliberate disorder—one thing illuminates the other. This also provides the best solution when a portrait is taken in the studio, because I don't like to have half-finished or discarded elements in the background. In fact I'd rather not be photographed in the studio at all.
My studio used to be a garage. I originally rented it for just a few weeks so that I could do trial setups of a large sculpture for Venice. Those few weeks have since turned into more than six years, but I still have to deal with the fact that the building's scheduled demolition might happen at any moment. In the end, the temporary nature of this situation has really benefitted the way I work, because it stops you from becoming too entrenched and keeps you on the move. But it has also shown me that a garage-sized space is ideal for a studio. There isn't much daylight—only when the doors are open. Instead I have movable lighting units, ceiling lights, and a few (but important) dimmable lamps. A wall we recently built divides the space into a painting studio and a sculpture studio. The rest will remain flexible until the building is eventually demolished."

Vik Muniz , Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 2011.

"Pereira Maquinas is the biggest junkyard in Rio and also our studio for the Pictures of Junk series. Junk is a very interesting material to work with because it is in a between stage, where the original function is gone and is about to be transformed into something else. Transformation is the stuff of art, when an idea transforms itself into matter."

Wade Guyton, New York, 2000.

"This is an unfinished sculpture in the studio. It's made of gold-, smoke- and bronze-mirrored acrylic, and solid-black Plexiglas. The strips are joined at the seams and form something like a screen with irregular angles and sizes. The photograph makes it appear environmental—as if I were surrounded by mirrors in a room. But actually the opposite is true: It is a discreet object that stands as a sculpture within a room. The surrounding room becomes absorbed in the object, multiplying the space perceptually. The different colors of the mirrors distort and at times impair the sculpture's reflectivity, complicating both the reflected surface and the viewer's relationship to the piece. I've built a few of these objects—one at Gavin Brown's Enterprise, one in London at Delfina— and they all function differently. As the viewer walks around the object, it's shape transforms, expanding and contracting along with the reflected architectural space.
A lot of my work is concerned with this expansion and contraction of space—perceptually and physi- cally. I take a lot of photographs and am interested in how a photograph condenses physical space and flattens objects. Often the sculptures I make reflect that phenomenon in their construction. This photograph in particular completes a cycle of contracting and expanding, resulting in a rather abstract and confusing representation of space, although this "effect" is not the only goal.
The sculpture—like much of my work—owes a lot to Minimalism and the use of rectilinear forms. But the pieces are, as one friend called them, "non-minimal." They are complicated and multifaceted, and they emphatically reject any notion of purity. They come directly from the world. There is a cheapness and a decadence to this piece...sort of pathetically glamorous—certainly committed to its shiny surface, but at the same time taped together, collapsible, provisional, and temporary."

Wolfgang Tillmans, London, U.K., 2006.

"This is the favorite window in my studio. I took a portrait of a friend sitting here the day before this portrait was taken. I was happy when Jason accepted my invitation to use the same spot. Windows have a central place in my work. They are the interface between private and public, inner and outer. The objects placed on a windowsill are charged by and negotiate this relationship." (bron en foto's; Jason Schmidt)

"This is my garage studio which pretty much looks chaotic all of the time because it's simply too small and I am somewhat in denial about this. It's clear by the face-down monitor in the background that I have time management issues and there is no better team player in the art of procrastination than my dog. The problem is it's very difficult to get any work done when KeeBee is in the studio. I constantly take breaks to check on her pointy ears, or her black lined eyes, her profile, the color transitions on her hind legs, even her smell.
I think when you love someone or something so profoundly it's hard to find suitable words that encapsulate that feeling. It becomes natural to invent words or mutate language as a substitute, kind of like reverse synesthesia. When I found my dog as a puppy I named her Foggy. She became KeeBee two weeks later."

Philip Taaffe, 2004.

Richard Aldrich, Brooklyn, New York, 2009.

Richard Prince, Rensselaerville, New York, 2005

Robert Mangold, 2014.

Sam Durant, Los Angeles, California, 2002.

"This is a view of the studio with work in progress on Upside Down: Pastoral Scene. I used Robert Smithson's Upside Down Tree (1969) as a starting point and a reference to the other ways the tree has been used in American culture. In the Bible and philosophy, the tree is used as a symbol of knowledge. In the Old Testament, the Tree of Knowledge is the source of evil, and man is expelled from paradise for consuming its fruit. In Enlightenment philosophy, the opposite is true: Knowledge is a source of freedom and power. In American culture, the tree has come to represent a brutal dialectic. It is a model of the family and of home—one's family tree and one's roots in the community—but it is also the hanging tree, the lynching tree. The song "Strange Fruit" as sung by Billie Holiday powerfully illustrates the hanging tree. This is the tree that symbolizes America's history of oppression and violence." (bron en foto's; Jason Schmidt)

woensdag, januari 27, 2016

"... Paris.1987.
I am thinking that I did see a lot of artists working in their studios,
Even Ilya when I was very young.
But it was the first time in my life watching someone doing installation.
Ilya was by himself, I was there just visiting him.
The room was vibrating with nervous energy, anxiety, uncertainty.
I was afraid to move, to say something...
Now we are in 2012.
Working together for all those years. A lot of experience.
After all, more than 300 installations are done,
And I don't even want to know how many exhibitions.
Always together, sharing work, happy and difficult moments.
I am not afraid anymore, I know how everything works, we are a small team: Ilya and I.
And I am still fascinated by the same energy, the same fears, and the abundance of fantasy I did see at our very first professional encounter."

Jorge Pardo, Los Angeles, California, 2009.

"In the studio, posing for a photograph, a lot of work...I think I weigh 10 lbs. less now."

Marcel Dzama , Brooklyn, New York, 2013.

Mark Grotjahn, Los Angeles, California, 2005.

Mike and Doug Starn , New York, 2009.

"Our work has always played with scale and the perceptions of where we all, as individuals, stand in the world. Here we are standing in Big Bambú, which is made from 2,000 bamboo poles lashed together with nearly sixteen miles of nylon rope. It was assembled at our studio, the former Tallix foundry in Beacon, New York, by a team of about eight rock climbers over a period of ten weeks. There is no external scaffolding involved; the piece grows out of itself as if it were a living organism. Later this spring, we will start to walk the piece across the foundry floor and back again by removing poles from the original mass and reattaching them at the front. Big Bambú is always finished and is never finished."

Monica Bonvicini , Berlin, Germany, 2009.

"I and a lot of crates just moved into my studio in Wedding, Berlin. To spare me the sight of a storage situation, I hung as a curtain a large print, which was produced for a show in Hong Kong. I am sitting on a very heavy crate containing the swings from my installation NEVER AGAIN. The crate was so heavy that I just left it where the transport company dropped it off. I soon realized that the size of the print and the quotation were sort of making male studio visitors uncomfortable. Crates are actually really nice objects and comfortable to sit on. I like to be around my works, even if they are in crates."

Olaf Breuning , New York, 2007.

"My studio and me. I've had this place for a few months, and I am very happy about it. For most of my career, I worked at home. I didn't know then how much better it was to work dressed in real clothes rather than pajamas. The works in this photograph are made out of found objects from Chinatown. They're part of a body of work entitled Chinatown Objects. Like Man Ray in old times, I go to a store (Pearl River), buy something already existing, and add other objects to it. The fact that all the materials are "Made in China" seems normal these days, but, as an artist who always tries to be timeless in time, I find them perfect contemporary materials to work with. I take what I get and that is what I get."

You can't really see me in the photo. I'm sitting in the dark storage room. The photographer did a very good job of hiding me.... I like that photo. Really, I do, no joke...." (bron en foto's; Jason Schmidt)

"Some of these paintings are completely inverted; some are done from a combination of sources. Having flowers around to work from is useful...I'll paint directly from the flowers, then from my head, then from photos of gardens or of other peoples' paintings. It seems to work best to mix it up. The black paintings began as a way of escaping from the gnarly, very colorful, and complex landscapes. I was getting very bogged down and wanted to make a more direct image, something more immediately legible. Now I move freely between the more graphic paintings and the fractured ones, working on them all at once and ideally hanging them together. I would love to get rid of the terms "abstract" and "figurative." I like each painting to contradict the last; I like the uncertainty. I'd like the work to be an argument full of interruptions, disruptions, and illogical decisions. I don't want to say, 'This is the way it is.'"

Chris Burden, Topanga Canyon, California, 2005.

"The photo shows me walking at sunset on the hillside above my studio. I have installed the sculpture Urban Light around two sides of my studio. Urban Light is an artwork that I created by amassing a huge collection of 1920s cast-iron streetlamps from Los Angeles and its many adjacent cities.
By placing 170 antique lamps close together in long colonnades, I have usurped the streetlamp's function. Together they form a sculpture. The viewer's experience of traversing these fluted columns is an exalted one that recalls the marvel of walking through classical Greek and Roman architecture or a European cathedral. The feelings of recollection and wonder transform the streetlamps into the sculpture, Urban Light."

Donald Baechler, New York, 2007.

Elizabeth Peyton, New York, 2004.

"This picture was taken in a studio on Greenwich Street in New York that I had from February 2004 to the end of April 2004. The studio was across the street from Gavin Brown's Enterprise—the gallery I've shown with for the past ten years and for which I was preparing a show during those months. Being so close to the gallery, the studio had a very familial atmosphere, and more and more I was asking people to come by so I could paint them from life. Everyone who came into the studio ended up sitting in this chair by the window—everyone looked great in this corner—whether it was flooded with afternoon light or inky black from the nighttime. The light at the moment this picture was taken was my favorite time—when the sun would begin to disappear and leave me alone. The works in the background are some drawings of people I was working with while making the show. The large, colorful one is Andre 3000 in his double sunglasses, performing at the VH1 awards. There is a pencil drawing of Laura Owens taking a break from painting, playing computer games, and another light pencil drawing of Annette Aurell in the studio, in the chair I'm sitting on in the picture."

Frank Stella, Rock Tavern, New York, 2011.

George Condo, New York, 2006.

"Sitting in my studio, surrounded by the parts and pieces of what is going through my mind. In the middle of painting the mad scientist and his wife, looking tired but feeling good, finished the Kerouac Book of Sketches cover, anticipating the exhibition of existential portraits in New York, and practicing the tenor viol—learning one of Orlando Gibbons's fantasias for three parts—smoking and drinking...." (bron en foto's; Jason Schmidt)

"....
A second example of the mirror in self-portrait is provided by the Bolognese painter Annibale Carracci who played with the vocabulary of the self-portrait by showing himself as a self-portrait in his own studio in a painting of 1604. Perched on an easel, Annibale’s framed self-image regards the spectator with his trade mark melancholia, while his palette hangs forlornly from his easel. A shadowy figure lurks by the window and a little dog stands nearby. The animal quotient was cut down in the final version; the sketch for it has a cat under the easel and a pack of dogs annibale 3 Annibale’s drawing is a highly complex meditation on the relationship between the self-portrait and the studio, underscored by the relationship between reality and illusion. In the top rectangle, a quick sketch for a conventional self-portrait is drawn, and in that an image is an oval mirror; this could be the artist’s own as he would have faced the mirror with his right shoulder towards it resulting in a reversed image as he worked. In the bottom rectangle, the self-portrait is placed within Annibale’s studio. This has a beamed ceiling, three dogs, one of which is barking at his master’s canvas- this is a witty way of suggesting the dog thinks it’s the real person, an update of Zeuxis fooling the animals in classical Greece. A cat cuddled up under the easel lends a note of domesticity and informality- no studio should be without one! The mysterious figure framed at the window may be the artist himself, peering into his studio, and in the process emphasising the dynamic between the real world and the realm of the studio, reality and artifice respectively. Finally, the bearded man to the right might relate to the clothes in the original self-portrait, which have been changed in the final version to convey less grandeur and more humility, not to say sadness, Annibale’s customary expression, according to his biographers.
...." (bron: Art History Today)